Channel Nine News

Channel Nine News Interview Transcript

Tomorrow is world mental health day, which aims to place mental health care at a higher level of importance globally. In Australia, support network Lifeline is encouraging us all to build a greater emotional resilience. Working in coordination with them is D-Stress author Meiron Lees, who joins us now.

What does it mean by building up emotional resilience?

“Resilience essentially is our internal strength, how we cope with our everyday challenges. We have about 60,000 thoughts every single day and most of them are negative. It’s imperative that we learn to manage the negative thoughts that churn through our mind on a daily basis.”

How do we offload some of this stress. We’re all stressed at the moment?

“What’s so important is to learn how to control and manage the negative thoughts that churn through our mind and to make our mind our best friend. We have forgotten how. One of the ways in which we can, is similar in the way a referee sends a Red Card to a player for a violation, so we can send our negative thoughts out through our mind in three simple steps.”

The first step is to recognise that these thoughts that are churning through our minds, our negative thoughts are harmful to us.

The second step is to appreciate that we can control our thoughts. No one is holding a gun to our head forcing us to think in a certain way.

The third and most important step is how else can I interpret the situation? How can I view these challenges in a more positive and optimistic way?

Why is mental health day globally a very important day and why should we recognise it?

“Globally mental health is increasing, and people don’t have enough support and know how to cope with it.”